PLO ditches Trump, undermines future UN and EU support

[Published 21 January 2018]


PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s extraordinary two-hour-long anti-American and Jew-hating diatribe delivered on January 14 must inevitably see:

1. Israel refusing to resume negotiations with the PLO

2. Another Arab partner replacing the PLO to negotiate with Israel in implementing President Trump’s eagerly-awaited ultimate deal.

The viciousness and vindictiveness of Abbas’s attack on the internationally-recognised legal right of the Jewish people to its own independent State — as endorsed by:

(i) the United Nations (“UN”) 1947 Partition Plan

(ii) the European Union (“EU”) 1980 Venice Declaration

(iii) UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338

(iv) The 1993 Oslo Accords

(v) President Bush’s 2003 Road Map - supported by both the UN and the EU

requires the UN and EU to unequivocally reject Abbas’s racist, false and misleading claims.

Abbas’s speech was delivered at what has been described as “a Palestinian Central Council meeting in Ramallah”.

In fact it was a very well stage-managed event involving the attendance of some 80 of the 132 Councillors and about 500 other persons. One vacant seat was reserved for the “Republic of Lithuania”. Diplomats from other countries were undoubtedly present

The backdrop included two huge screens each containing five maps of Palestine from 1947 onwards — conveniently excluding 78% of Palestine — today called Jordan - granted independence by Great Britain in 1946.

President Trump has already reacted to Abbas’s following inflammatory remarks by withholding US$65 million to UNRWA:

1. “Let them [the US] not do us a favor by paying us money… We do not want anyone to pay us.”

2. “We will not accept the deals the US wants to impose on us. We will not accept its mediation after the crime it committed against Jerusalem.”

3. “There are two names that I don’t want to mention, but my conscience is bothering me, so I have to mention them. American Ambassador David Friedman… He says: “There is no occupation, who said there’s an occupation? Israel is building on its lands.” ... The second name, their Ambassador to the UN Ms. Haley… who said: ‘I wear high heels not for fashion, only to hit whoever attacks Israel.’ I say to her — and may she hear me — [our] response is going to be worse, but not by way of high heels.”

4. “The Americans are always telling us that we must stop paying salaries to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners. We categorically reject this demand.”

Further retaliatory action by Trump seems certain.

Interestingly Abbas also claimed:

“We made a decision at the [Arab] Summit in Amman in 1980 that every state that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or that transfers its embassy to it — we must cut our relations with it.”

The Minutes of that Summit actually record:

“The Conference also emphasized that the liberation of Arab Jerusalem was a national duty and a national obligation, proclaimed the rejection of all measures taken by Israel, requested all nations of the world to adopt clear and defined positions in opposition to the Israeli measures and resolved to break off all relations with any country recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or transferring its embassy there.”

Attendees at the 1980 Summit were:

Bahrain
Djibouti
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Mauritania
Morocco
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Tunisia
United Arab Emirates
Yemen

How many of these countries will now break off diplomatic relations with America following its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will serve as a useful indicator of the support the PLO can continue to receive in the Arab world.

Abbas’s Ramallah rant has provided irrefutable evidence that the PLO has no further role to play in peacefully resolving the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.